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Share Your World January 13, 2020

What’s something your brain tries to make you do, which you have to will yourself NOT to do?  (could be a bad habit, a physical response to something…your interpretation is as good as mine! )

My brain tries to make me fall asleep while I’m reading. That’s because I’m in bed and relaxed and comfy and warm, it’s probably late and I’m no doubt tired. You can see why my brain gets confused. It gently nudges me to slow my breathing as it closes my eyes, while it continues on with the narrative which I am no longer reading because I can’t see it. In other words, it starts making shit up. I think it is hoping I won’t notice and will just drift off into oblivion. It’s not skilled at believability unfortunately, and if things get too wonky and weird I wake up with a start, because whatever strange turn the story has taken, even my brain has to admit that can’t be right. So I have to will myself to focus and backtrack a few lines so I can find out what really happened.

Having a confrontation with my own brain is something I’ve honestly never thought about before. I wonder if I ask it nicely if it would stop telling my hands to release their grip on my kindle at the same time as all this other stuff is happening. Because getting clunked in the face while falling asleep is counterproductive.

When someone finds out what you do, or where you are from, what question do they always ask you?

They normally just stifle a yawn and change the subject. I’m from eastern Canada, now living in western Canada, and I’m retired. See? You’re already looking ahead to the next question.

What’s something terrifying that we’ve all come to accept as a fact of life?

Corruption fueled by greed. The good guys play by the rules and the bad guys don’t.

Should governments make laws to protect people from harming themselves?  Could that even work?  (yes this one is deep, maybe too deep).

Isn’t that what they do already? There are all kinds of laws supposed to keep us from harming each other. How’s that working out for all of us? Gah, don’t get me started on politics and the state of the world. Ignorance (of the willful kind) and stupidity are rampant. Make a law against that.

Gratitude is an Attitude…
Please share your gratitude for this past week in the form of a photo, a quote or a thought.   🙂

“Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. It is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.”

— Alan Watts

This struck such a raw nerve with me, the purposeful life hurrying on and on, missing everything. I remember one long ago morning rushing around getting ready for work thinking it was all so pointless. Showering, getting dressed, fixing my hair, putting on makeup, grabbing something to eat, backing out of the driveway, being mad at moron drivers, dealing with idiots all day and coming home exhausted. Tomorrow I’d have to get out of bed and do everything all over again, and then the day after that and the day after that and on and on until death set me free. It was pretty depressing and I’ve never forgotten the feeling. But I’ve also never experienced it again to that depth of despair. I’m grateful for that.

Tiny poll:   I’m curious what type of questions YOU, the reader, would like to see more of?   Less of?   Has SYW gotten too philosophical and less fun in nature?

Life is as depressing or as fun as you choose to make it, regardless of what bits of your world you’re prompted to share. I think the questions are a nice mix of silly and serious.

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Somewhere north of Lake Superior on our road trip heading home taken through the car windshield en route because yes I am exactly that lazy.

Well look what I just retrieved from various places in the drafts folder.  Proof of my good intentions.  And other not so admirable traits.

Share Your World – August 14, 2017

When you leave a room, do you turn the lights off behind you or keep the lights on throughout your house most of the time?

When I’m home alone there are a lot of lights on everywhere, upstairs and down.  Probably because there’s no one following me around turning them off.  So I guess that answers that question.

What do you feel is the most enjoyable way to spend $500?

Because of some unexpected expenses this year, the unnecessary expenditures have been put on hold.  And those are always the most enjoyable kind, aren’t they?  Three people in the last little while have asked me, while browsing through my “library”, if I have any new books on my shelves.  It feels a little alarming to me to have to say that I don’t.  Buying real honest to goodness in your hand page turning books is the best way I know to spend time and money.  Because omg, look what you bring home.  Hours and hours of awesomeness.

I’m still doing lots of reading.  Every day I download one or two free e-books from Amazon.  There have been some real doozies but there have also been a few gems.  I wonder if I’ve missed my calling as a fiction editor.  I like the idea of someone else doing all the thinking and then I just improve the way the story is told.  I do a lot of skipping over the dreadful parts.

Complete this sentence: My favorite thing to do on my cell phone is…

Well first off I have to find the damned thing.  If I’ve left the sound turned on it makes that part easier.  I check for missed calls and text messages, making a mental note of how long ago they happened.  Sometimes I’m so on the ball answering a text it must truly startle the recipient, since my normal response is hours later.  I’m working on this, I promise, trying to carry my phone around with me from room to room, but doing that is also the reason I misplace it so often.  It could be anywhere.  It’s rarely used for phone calls because we still cling to our land line.  And I never use it for game playing because the screen is too small.  It’s always with me when I leave home, even for a walk, because what if I broke my ankle or got lost or needed to take a picture of the inside of my pocket?  Best to be prepared for these things.

Share Your World – October 9, 2017

What do you consider is the most perfect food for you? (It can be your favorite food to something extremely healthy.)

Once upon a time it was rich, dark, chocolate ice cream with drizzled chocolate syrup. Then unfortunately I grew up.

The perfect food for me now that I am old and boring is low in carbs, low in sugar, high in protein and essential vitamins and minerals and fibre and all that other good stuff, tastes fantastic, and a small portion completely satisfies my hunger. If you have any idea what that food is, please let me (and the rest of the world) know so we can all feel less despondent about leaving chocolate ice cream behind.

Meanwhile I will continue to struggle with my choices. However, I have to tell you I’m astounded lately by my consistently low glucose readings so I must be doing something right. Even though I continue to periodically give in to a craving for salty crap like potato chips.

Are you focused on today or tomorrow?

Today, this moment in time. Well that would be ideal, wouldn’t it? Never dwelling on the past, never fretting about the future. Never craving potato chips.

If you could interview one of your great-great-great grandparents, who would it be (if you know their name) and what would you ask?

My great-great-great grandparents on my dad’s side of the family were probably messing about somewhere in Scotland in the late 1700’s. Pure conjecture on my part since I’ve never researched anyone so far back. They could have come from anywhere and changed their identities for all I know. Since they are all dead I think I might be inclined to ask them what they’re up to now.  Or perhaps more realistically, what they were up to then.

What inspired you this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

My lack of participation in the big world of blogging should be your first clue that I have been largely uninspired lately by anything at all.

 

Okay, so that ended on a bit of a low note! Must have been a bad news week.  Ever leave something in your draft files so long (because it’s not good enough to publish) that when you finally get around to cleaning them up, some of it really doesn’t sound as blah as you thought it did originally?  But as for the rest of it, the “delete” button is your friend?  I’m down to seven drafts, so on a desperate day any one of them could surface.  Apologizing in advance.

 

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Share Your World – May 15, 2017

How many languages do you speak?

Regrettably, only one.  Although if I truly did regret it, nothing is stopping me from learning to speak another one.  For this to happen I imagine it’s best to have someone fluent in the new language with whom to converse.  Because this person would be able to helpfully correct my pronunciation and grammar after laughing at it.  Thankfully I don’t know anyone like that.

What are you reading, watching, listening to, eating?

I am reading an e-book called “Weightless” by Kandi Steiner.  It’s about eighteen year old Natalie who gets dumped by her boyfriend, decides to hit the gym, and then falls for her personal trainer.  Everybody has issues.  Her friends, her mother, her step dad, her ex and his nasty new girlfriend, her hot trainer and his nasty clients….and she is sorry high school is done and debating what to do next.  And I just want to say “Run, Natalie, run!”  The book was a Kindle daily deal.  Totally worth the money.

I am watching “New Blood”, a BBC detective type series on Netflix.  Season one, episode four, case two, part one.  Not sure why I remember all that and even more confused as to why I feel the need to share it.  Episodes one two and three were case one, parts one two and three.  Maybe I’m just proud of my attention to unimportant details.  I like the main characters and how they end up working together and solving the shit out of stuff.

I am listening to the rain pour down and feeling all smug that I put off starting my walk because of all those menacing dark clouds and thus didn’t get caught in the downpour.

I ate a toasted scrambled egg sandwich on dark European rye bread with ketchup on the side for brunch.  Wow, I am a total detail freak today.

What was the last photo you took with your phone?

There it is at the top of this post.  A piece of cracked sidewalk and some scrubby spring grass.  I was putting my phone back in to my pocket and somehow managed to capture this brilliant moment in time on my walk through one of the alley walk-ways between houses in my neighbourhood yesterday. I hope no one tries to steal this incredible image without my permission.

What is your favorite time of day?

Early morning.  Because coffee.

Optional Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

I am grateful for a lovely quiet weekend on my own doing pretty much nothing out of the ordinary….even though Sunday was Mothers Day and Saturday was my birthday.  My daughter, son, daughter-in-law and oldest granddaughter sent me texts.  THEY ALL KNOW ME SO WELL!  I don’t like a lot of fuss and I love that they get that.  W sent a text on Sunday night saying sorry he missed my birthday and Happy Mother’s Day and here’s what’s going on with ME….

Is it weird that I’m ok with all of this?  Probably.  Oh well, whatever, weird is good too, right?  I love them all and I am loved and nothing else really matters after that.

Okay, the sun is out!  Time to drag myself away from the IPad and onto the cracked streets and walkways and bike paths of my soaking wet world!  Then I can get back to crime season episode part whatever the hell is going on case solving.  Don’t ever say my priorities are screwed up.  They are, but you don’t need to say it.

 

 

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Share Your World – 2016 Week 34

What is your favorite comfort snack food?

Chips.  I will even snack on the ones I don’t like (ketchup, barbecue, salt and vinegar, anything extra spicy) simply for the salty taste.  Well, it’s not sugar, is it?  But still bad for you.  I don’t know why I crave salt.  And I wish I could truthfully say fruit and raw vegetables are my favourite, because they’re great and I love them, just not the way I love sour cream and onion or all dressed or nacho chips.  It’s kind of like being drawn to the Fonz in high school when you know Richie would be the smarter choice.

Is the paper money in your possession right now organized sequentially according to denomination and with the bills right side up and facing the same way?

I had a five dollar bill and a handful of change in my purse but I gave it to my daughter the other day because she had a flat tire in my driveway and had to call AMA to get it changed and then the spare tire needed air and apparently you need change for those air machines.  The AMA guy was nice enough to follow her to the nearest gas station and help her out with that too so that she could drive home.

So the answer to the question is – there is no paper money in my possession right now.  There very rarely is because I use bank cards for everything.  But if there was, YES, it would be that anally organized.  Anyone who has ever worked with cash knows that’s what you have to do with it if you want to sleep at night.

If you were a mouse in your house in the evening, what would you see your family doing?

Snacking on chips.  That would be just me since I’m the only one here at the moment and no one is around to give me disapproving looks about my snack choices.  I need to stop buying those stupid things.  Also if I’m not moving furniture and various messes around I am doing important stuff on my iPad.

Would you rather not be able to read or not be able to speak?

I can go for days without speaking, except for the occasional expletive when some redecorating procedure goes wrong.  Then when I do talk on the phone or in person my voice sounds all weird and hoarse until I get it going again.  So as long as there’s texting and emails I guess it would be no great loss for me to give up speaking.  I do say some pretty stupid boring things.  But give up reading?  I hope that never happens.

Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Another room is finished!  But just when it looks like the redecorating phase of my summer is nearing completion,  (two bedrooms to go), I decide to rip up the master bedroom carpet.  I hope this helps to explain my latest absence.  I also got the last stipple ceiling scraped off and chucked out.   And I moved three bookcases and a gazillion books into the space that is now no longer my art room.  Because the art room is moving to a new space in the master bedroom now that there’s so much space in there with the books gone and a smaller dresser and no dust collecting monster headboard.  But this latest rearrangement has to wait until the room is all painted and the floor is tiled.  Or something is done to the floor.  At the moment the bare sub floor is looking better than the carpet ever did.

So that’s my jumbled up upside down world to date.  I need some chips.

Bedtime Cookbook

How far shall we flash back this fine Friday?  More than a lifetime for some of you, and just a drop in the time bucket for the rest of us.

What is more delightful than two recently bathed children with shiny clean hair all ready for bed?  Sitting together, sharing, being super good so bedtime will be delayed.

This was not a rare moment.  My mom often remarked on how well my kids got along with each other.  That changed for a while in their teens, but really, underneath the growing pains, they have always remained good friends.

I know it looks like the reflection of a halo on my daughters head, but don’t let it fool you.  She had her un-angelic moments.  And I never realized my son had such expressive toes.  I think that might be our polar bear hide on the wall in the background.  Hard to believe now we ever had such a thing.  But this is the NWT in the late 1970’s.  We didn’t know any better.  And that awful brown colonial furniture was in every government house.

One other thing I noticed in this faded photo is that the book they’re reading is not a kids book (although they had lots of those I swear). It appears to be a cookbook.  My poor children.  Is this what I gave them instead of reading them a bedtime story?  I can imagine the two of them pointing at the pictures saying – what is this yummy dish called?Mom has never made anything this awesome for us!  Maybe she doesn’t know how!  Maybe she doesn’t really love us!

Hey, they’re alive and clean.  Looks like it was a good parenting day to me.

Rain Stories

Rain was a popular subject for primary school children learning to read in the early 1900’s.  I am basing this assumption on these stories from the Ontario Readers Primer, authorized by THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION (that part was important enough in the book to print in all caps bold) published in 1920.

How lucky am I to possess books that are almost a hundred years old? Even if the stories are blatantly sexist.  Wimpy little girl afraid of the rain vs. bold adventurous little boy having fun.

In this case the smart males all seek shelter and the silly female goose doesn’t. Girls just can’t win.

Isn’t that delightful? The pages are well-read, faded and stained, the cover is worn and falling apart and the binding disintegrating and barely holding everything together. It’s one of the things my mother felt was worth saving, and it is one of my treasures.

Three Quotes: The Middle

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Three Quotes in Three Days  (see yesterdays post)

I nominate three people out there who would like to complete this challenge!  You know who you are, even if I don’t!  Yes, that was a very lazy way of getting out of actually naming people.  No pressure here.  But I do recommend this book.  It’s wonderful and weird.

Hope you’re having an extraordinary summertime Tuesday.

Winter Weather Jots

For those of you who don’t already know it, this month is officially Just Jot it January, or JusJoJan.  See, I have the sign to prove it.  You can even click on it for the link.

It is also cold outside, and I have proof of that too because I took a screen shot.

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My new weather network app informed me this clear sunny Sunday morning that the temperature outside was -34 C, feels like -43 C.  So it’s gotten considerably better since then, right?  Except that the early dark always makes me feel colder.

I got rid of my old weather app because it always showed me a pretty rural landscape which appeared to have inclement weather happening somewhere in front of it, or off to the side with little actual effect on the blue sky and green grass.  There was also a big bold and annoying sign hanging in the sky telling me how lovely the premium features of this app would prove to be if only I would decide to purchase the upgrade.  So I deleted it instead.

I live with a weatherman, and the app is just a heads up, so that when he stands in front of me looking out the window to inform me that it’s snowing, I can say I already knew that.  Today of all days he decided he had to get out of the house and do something.  So all by myself I have had to figure out that it’s snowing heavily in B.C. and there is dangerous freezing rain in the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland has some crazy winds going on.

It’s a very good day for all sane Canadians to stay inside and read a good book I think.  This thought brings us all the way back around in a circle to the first prompt theme for JusJoJan which happens to be Reading.  See how I did that?  But, back to the jotting part, the rules state that we can also jot down random thoughts and share them.

Being currently in a very share-y mood and a chronic haver of random thoughts, I decided to go through my list of the puzzling things I have on my notebook phone app.  Little pieces of paper can go missing or be thrown away.  These, on the other hand, tend to accumulate and defy deletion.

1.  dates, rice flour, coconut, espresso powder? (I think the question mark indicates that I feared not being able to find such a thing because it might not exist)

2.  sit in the fridge for 10 minutes (recipe instructions that cracked me up)

3.  4:20 pick up time 23rd (I believe that was about a bus on holidays.  You don’t want to miss a holiday bus.)

4.  Appt at 1, be there 15 min early, allow for traffic and parkade and bicycle accidents (Good advice I guess)

5.  A little mini list of my grandchildren and each of their birthdays.  (I remember doing this one, because I got tired of being asked their ages and having to be vague about it.  Bad grandma.)

6.  Scrubber Vileda (because brand names are hard to remember)

7.  A long and involved recipe for  Lebkuchen  (although I’m not even sure what that is)

8.  Sorry, I was busy expanding my inner bliss in to the universe. (Always put you excuses in writing)

9.  Glop is a valid scrabble word (Who knew?  Probably every scrabble player but me)

10.  De-calcify pineal gland (what?)

There’s  more than ten, but you probably don’t care what my cell phone bill amounts are.  Or the prices of organic produce.  Frankly, neither do I, once the moment has passed.

Well, that’s entirely enough jotting for one day.  There will be a new prompt on the 10th.  I’m sure I will be able to flub my way through that one too.  Or glop.  I could also glop.  Maybe I should jot that down.

Just Jazzy 241

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 28

Happiness is losing yourself in a good book, and finding yourself there too.

Just Jazzy 227

Jazzy Does 100 Days of Happiness 14

Happiness is knowing you are THIS CLOSE to the end of the book, five hundred pages from where you started.